Dartling Gun

We’ve been continuing to add extra content to Bloons TD 4 for a couple of months now, a couple of really cool new tracks and now an all-new never before seen tower type. The Dartling Gun is unique among towers as it doesn’t target Bloons at all, rather it follow the mouse and sprays darts wherever you point. This opens up some rather special tactical play.

The Dartling Gun shoots darts at wherever your mouse cursor is pointing. This and the Heli Pilot are the only towers to date that is controlled by the player's mouse moving. In Bloons Tower Defense 5, this tower costs $810 on easy, $950 on medium, $1025 on hard and $1140 on impoppable.

The Dartling Gun can be upgraded in many factors, such as attack speed and popping power. For example, it normally pops 1 bloon per dart, but when upgraded, it can pop 3 with Powerful Darts, 13 with the Laser Cannon, 100 with the Ray of Doom (infinite in Mobile/Steam), and has 40 popping power from the explosions from Hydra Rocket Pods or BADS.

In general, Dartling Gun is fairly balanced, but has been buffed via game updates as some upgrades have been buffed for balancing reasons.

Dartling is quite a versatile tower but is often very expensive to be reliable grouped bloon-popping power or MOAB-class-popping power. In Version 4.3.1, it was significantly buffed to be a much more reliable tower in the early-game, particularly against Grouped Reds. Later Dartling became drastically more used when people discovered the exploit with Hydra Rocket Pods and Monkey Fort, which can easily defend pretty much anything. Popular loadouts include Dartling-Farm-Village, Dartling-Farm-Ice, Dartling-Farm-Bomb, and Dartling-Village-Ice.

3.4

Ray of Doom attack rate increased, making it more powerful than the Ray of Doom in other games.

4.3.1

Tower price decreased ($950 → $850).

Powerful Darts pierce increased (3 → 4).

4.6

Bloon Area Denial System price decreased ($20000 → $16000).

6.0

Bloon Area Denial System ability will no longer increase rockets spawned when near x-1 Village or when activating the Pierce Boost Power.

6.0.1

Hydra Rocket Pods and Bloon Area Denial System rockets will no longer multiply when near a x-1 Village or when activating the Pierce Boost Power

The Dartling Gun is one of the two towers that had arrived later in BTD4, the other being the Spike Factory.

Ray of Doom is unaffected by speed and pierce buffs, meaning that you should not waste the ability of M.I.B. Call to Arms or Overclock on Rays of Doom.

In BTD5, a single Ray of Doom can completely destroy a ZOMG all by itself on Space Truckin'.

In BTD5, filling all of Monkey Lane with 0/0 Dartling Guns can destroy a ZOMG NLL.

In BTD5, a single Dartling Gun upgraded with Faster Barrel Spin can destroy a ceramic all by itself on Monkey Lane.

In BTD5, each Hydra rocket pod can pop 40 bloons with its explosion.

In BTD5, Faster Barrel Spin increases the Dartling Gun's attack speed by exactly 75%, making two 1-0 Dartling Guns have more popping power than one 2-0 Dartling Gun for the same price.

In BTD5, the BADS ability shoots 5 waves of rockets, each of which target the nearest 100 bloons. This buff was made sometime in early 2012, originally it only shot one wave, which was quite underwhelming for its price.

In BTD4, there is no hotkey for the Dartling Gun. In BTD5, its hotkey is N.

Dartling Guns have a target priority system like any other tower in BTD4, but as the tower's aim is controlled by the cursor, the target priority system has no influence whatsoever.

In BTD4, the Dartling Gun is the one of the four towers that can pop a Camo Bloon without any upgrades, the other three being the Mortar Tower, Monkey Ace and the Spike Factory. It is guided by the player, however, and the Mortar Tower aims at a place determined by the user, and the Monkey Ace flies around and shoots randomly, and the Spike Factory throws spikes onto the road at a certain rate.

In BTD5, the Spike Factory, the Dartling Gun and the Ninja Monkey, a tower new to the Bloons TD series, are the only towers that don't need an upgrade to pop a Camo Bloon or damage a DDT in BMCM. The Monkey Ace now needs the Spy Plane upgrade and the Mortar Tower now needs the Signal Flare upgrade.

The Dartling Gun is based on the real-life gatling gun, even though it has nowhere near the fire rate, even with max fire rate.

In the Flash version of BTD5 it has 6 barrels similar to the real Minigun but in the mobile version, it has only four.

If the player wishes not to control the Dartling Gun, it is a good idea to put the cursor in the beginning of the track and exit the screen, since you cannot aim outside the game screen. However, if you do this, you will have to use Hotkeys to control gameplay unless you want to keep setting the cursor and moving it off the screen.

The Tier 3 Dartling Ammo Dump allows the Dartling Gun to aim at a specific spot, which removes the burden of having the cursor remain in one place.

In the computer version, there is a way to aim anywhere on the game screen without the Dartlings following your cursor. Set the aiming point of the Dartlings, then Right click the screen.the system will ignore the game screen. You can leave it after that. However, one disadvantage is that you cannot place any towers when Dartlings are set. Despite this, it is very useful for going to another game while you leave the towers to fight by themselves.

It is one of the only towers not to have targeting priorities, due to the fact the cursor controls it.